


Aftershock

by kesomon



Series: Ram, Expanded [11]
Category: Tron (1982), Tron (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 19:22:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2823266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kesomon/pseuds/kesomon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tron couldn't let himself process how quickly things had gone <i>wrong.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftershock

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I admit this one has been finished for some time; I was just under the delusion that it belonged as the first part in a larger fic which I was stalled on. Giving it to you all as an early holiday gift; Happy Angsting!

In the outskirts of the sector for High Clearance Memory, a single spot of bright colour and light flickered into being.

Small enough to be missed by the patrols overhead, the small, orange lightcycle danced through the twists and turns of the outland canyons. Dark walls on either side loomed with claustrophobic silence overhead as the bike sped through the conduits, engine whining with the stress of being pushed to its limits, never designed to run outside a gaming grid. Still, the rider pressed on, taking turns with reckless abandon as he followed the pathways in a random pattern in an effort to elude his hunters.

Beneath the lightcycle’s wheels, the road flew by without definition, a haze of dark landscape streaked through with the reflected motion-blur of system circuit-lights. They reflected a pattern on the face of the rider as they passed; taking turns to cast his features in light, then in shadow, and light again. Each wash of illumination revealed a program with a look of stony determination, eyes clouded by some deep and unfathomable storm.

Though his expression was grim and focused, inside Tron’s thoughts raced. His logic circuits were at war with themselves, unclosed _[if]_ statements clashing with pure and heady denial.

He forced himself to concentrate, kept his eyes fixed on the beacon of the I/O tower as it drew nearer. Even as he took corners and sub-conduits that blocked it from view, he maintained a spatial recording of its location. He couldn’t lose sight of it; couldn’t let himself get distracted; couldn’t stray from his goal.

The system monitor couldn’t let himself process how quickly things had gone _wrong_.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

On the lip of a ledge, a brief respite mirroring the one that had begun their trip across the outlands, the trio knelt to rest and consider their next course of action with varying levels of enthusiasm. Ram seemed cheerfully bemused about their success thusfar in evading capture; Flynn, on his part, continued to show a strange, upbeat enthusiasm about the whole directive. Tron, ever security-conscious, was frowning at the obstacle before them.

They had crossed the darkened sector with minimal interference, hiding only twice from the patrols of Recognizers as they swept overhead. Despite the proximity of the aircraft, no search scans had ever come near to locating them. The Recos all rocketed past, heading for the sector they had last been seen in, ignoring the dead landscape beneath them.

Tron supposed Sark’s arrogance played a part in this good fortune. After all, why would three fugitive programs head into a dead zone? It was easy to get disorientated and lost in the dark terrain, and there was no ambient energy to keep them functional if they ran out of reserve power. It was clearly suicidal to even consider it.

Yet that was exactly what Tron, Ram, and Flynn had done, all three fully aware of how low their energy was, thanks to rationing and exertion.

Sark needed to upgrade his strategy engines.

Finding an energy spring in the midst of their journey had been a stroke of luck, or perhaps the will of the Users. Now, perched at the edge of the dead zone and circuits thrumming with full power, Tron could feel the strength and clarity of his User’s call, drawing him in, urging him onward.

He sent up a silent thanks to Alan-One for the bounty that they had been given to succeed in their quest, and focused his attention back on the patrols.

“Okay, I’m getting the pattern now…no, wait, lost it. ~ _Deletion_.~ Something’s got them worked up and scuttling about like gridbugs on a glitched wireframe; I can’t get a good read. Might be a gap coming up where we could slip through…but I’ll need another 17.365 nanos to be sure,” Ram reported from where he was sprawled on his stomach, his hands cupped around his eyes. He’d done something to the code of the optical connectors built into the side panels of his helmet, and was now surveying the tank patrols that circled the area through haphazardly-coded magnifiers.

Flynn had muttered something about binoculars, whatever those were. The novice program was stretched out beside Ram, squinting as he tried to make out what the actuary was looking at.

Ram clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Yee-up, there’s a gap forming. If we hang tight 12.037 nanos more I can confirm if it’s just a fluke or a pattern.”

“I’d rather not wait that long,” Tron replied, eyes straying to the I/O tower beam. “If we go now, could we could edge past through the gap before they notice?”

“If I quote you the odds on that, will you hit me again?” Ram asked with a sideways look, deactivating the magnifiers and glancing up at him.

“I only hit you that one time,” the monitor replied distractedly.

Ram smirked and looked at Flynn, explaining, “He cuffed me when I went to the 31st decimal place doing stats calculations for a tag-team Invaders match.”

Flynn snickered. “I gotta go with Tron on that one, bud; you might’ve deserved it.”

“Considering we won by the width of a pixel, _I_ say the math was justified,” the actuary sniffed and returned to his recon. “I still think we’re pushing it trying to re-enter the active system this close to the HCM. It’s making my circuits tingle, and not in the fun way.”

“ _Ram_.”

He snapped the magnifiers off with a huff and pushed himself up. “Alright, alright. It’s safe enough. But we have an _incredibly_ small window of opportunity – let’s go before it closes and cuts us off at the knees.”

They made their way down into the active sector as quickly and as quietly as possible, slipping through the gap Ram had predicted would come between the tanks and Recos that circled the HCM-Complex. Uneven terrain quickly shifted to smooth, developed roads as they moved further into the developed canyons, but they dared not re-form their lightcycles yet. They were still far too close to the patrols; a vehicle rez put out an energy pulse that would garner a rapid response.

Yet despite their caution, Tron was still being guided by that distant call. As they made their way, the resonant pull in his code strengthened; there was a new urgency in Alan-One’s summons. Though they were still far too close to the high-security area, the system monitor halted their party with a raised fist and grabbed his lightcycle baton from its holster.

“Are you sure we’re far enough away?” Ram asked, even as he followed the action; Flynn as well, a dubious look on his face.

“We’ll have to risk it,” Tron said, and activated the bike.

The variant whine of three lightcycle engines filled the silence rapidly as they sped off through a conduit.

As they pulled out of a corridor and put the I/O tower beam in their sights, Tron’s confidence grew, and he pushed his bike faster, pulling ahead of his friends. This was his home sector; he knew the hidden paths better than anyone. They only needed to reach the farthest side, and that meant a daring dash across the exposed bridge nodes, but they could make it. At the next node, he pulled his bike in a corner turn that wasn’t meant to be used outside the arena, and started across the narrow platform that spanned the gap between the sectors; Ram and Flynn still lagged along the path that cut along the side of the cliffs.

Maybe it was the giddy elation, riding the power surge of energy levels kept at a constant state of alertness.

Maybe it was the optimism at being undetected up to that point.

Maybe it was the proximity to the sector and their goal that caused them to lower their guards.

The security tank that loomed up behind them had been well-hidden by the terrain; it had them in its crosshairs within picocycles, with the fugitives none the wiser.

The only warning they had was an incoming projectile alarm.

The rapid beeping of the alert subroutine snagged Tron’s attention away from the beacon to the control panel of his cycle, and he had just enough time to register what it meant before the very ground beneath his wheels rose up in a tremendous upheaval. The world became a chaotic confusion of light and sound. His bike became airborne, spinning, tumbling, tossed about like a Solar Sailer in a magnetic storm.

Processes flared to life, systems taking input even through the confusion and disorientation. His balancers reset, spatial calculators recalibrating and attuning to the floor that was coming up on him far too rapidly. He yanked the bike back into alignment, fighting the pull of gravity that threatened to make him a smear of pixels and data on the silicon landscape, and braced for impact.

His back wheel hit first, then the front a fraction later, a few voxels flying off from the force of the landing, sparking energy in protest of the abuse. Thankfully, it took a bit more than that to derezz a bike; the frame shuddered around him, but held together.

As soon as he was able, he arrested the bike’s forward momentum and spun it around, braking sharply as he looked back at the devastation that had been wrought on his heels.

The bridge had been all but obliterated by the tank’s cannon fire. Huge chunks of structural silicon littered the chasm floor and the open area on which Tron had found refuge. Tron was awestruck, fully aware of how lucky he’d been to avoid derezzing, from either the blast or his rough landing. On the farther side of the gap, great holes had been torn in the cliff face, and the path they had been riding on was all but buried under the amount of material that had been separated from the otherwise smooth walls.

Of Ram’s red lightcycle, or the yellow panels of Flynn’s, there was no sign.

Tron stared at the desolation in horror, gazing into the abyss, hoping to catch some fleeting glimpse of colour among the gray. Had they been on the bridge when it was hit, or on the road? Had the blast struck them directly? Had they fallen, or been buried under the weight of so much rubble?

For Ram and Flynn to have survived the Games, to taste freedom and then be _erased_ – it made no logical sense to the security monitor. His face contorted with grief as he gave a cry in raw binary, equal parts mournful, angered, and denying.

~ _No!_ ~

He had to get down there. He had to find them, even if all that was left to find was the shimmer of data dust and deresolved pixels. He had to–

The proximity alarm began beeping again, picocycles ahead of a new barrage of cannon fire that caught the cliff to his left. Tron flinched from the burst of light and debris, glared savagely at the tank convoy that was slowly working its way up the node bridge corridor. The leader’s long turret swivelled, bringing the lone program into the crosshairs. The barrel began charging up, preparing another salvo.

The presence of the tanks dashed all hopes of finding Ram or Flynn; he had to get out of there or risk derezzing as well. With a snarl that promised vengeance, Tron revved his machine and sped off down a narrow gully, counting on the bulk of the tanks preventing them from following him.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The lights of a Reco’s scanner flashed by overhead, doing another sweep of the canyons for the fugitive system monitor. Tron immediately ducked his lightcycle beneath an overhang and silenced the engine. The bike’s circuitry went dim as the power flow went into standby, making it less likely to be picked up by the data sweeps.

Tron held his breath as the scan passed over his hiding place, but the overhang hid him well. As the Recognizer roared away, he let out a quiet sigh of relief, and hung his head. He wasn’t used to being on constant alert. From the moment they’d become friends, Ram had been his extra eyes and ears, a second scanner to keep watch while Tron was exhausted from the Games. Ram saw things Tron missed, caught mistakes before they could turn into disasters, kept him from getting too stubborn and unyielding. Tron trusted him, more than he should have as a security program, but Ram had never let him down.

A sudden tightness coiled in Tron’s chest, a swell of emotion threatening to bubble to the surface and consume him. Energy discharge prickled at the corners of his eyes, processors on the verge of overheating. The security program shook his head fiercely with a ragged gasp, clearing the wetness away with his palm. He couldn’t break now. It wasn’t safe, not with the pursuit force still combing the conduits for his lightcycle signature.

He should have listened to Ram’s warnings. What would’ve been the harm in waiting another few nanocycles for caution?

Instead, drawn by his User’s call, Tron had insisted.

And Ram had agreed, because Ram trusted Tron’s decisions.

And Flynn…Flynn was too naïve, too young to know any better.

It was _Tron’s fault_ they were gone now.

The Recognizers’ rumble had faded; his pursuers had moved on. It was time to go. Tron set his sights once more towards the I/O tower beam, powering the lightcycle back to operation and pulling out into the open.

Would he arrive at his destination, only to find Yori missing as well?

_Alan-One, keep her safe_ , he prayed, as he gripped the controls of his lightcycle tightly. The bike turned and he saw the end of the canyon ahead; he increased his speed, bending low over the body of the vehicle, even though the canopy took variable wind resistance out of the equation. The bike rocketed out across the flat, open plain that separated the sectors. _Keep the MCP’s eyes off of her. Don’t let me lose another this cycle; let her be whole._

The lightcycle thrummed urgently as it accelerated, kicking up pixel dust in its wake. Soon, it was nothing but a spot of light against the dark landscape.


End file.
